I would leave them on. You can lightly tie them to the cage if you want. Otherwise the bent branching will be fine. UNLESS they are broken badly. Then , of course, if the number and volume of the branches are overwhelming, you can cut some of them,. This happened to my ML about a week ago too. I did exactly what I just told you. And the plant is doing just fine.

Don't get me wrong-I myself have long participated in reforesting of our city following the elm event. Of course there's still some great streets and neighborhoods-even whole communities. What I am saying though is that in the aggregate, summing the whole kit and kaboodle up, we have a lesser resource today than we did yesteryear. For one example, even in my city the forester or others like to tout the fact that each year, we plant more trees than we remove. Yes, of course we do, I say, but the new trees are almost all going into new streets, new subdivisions that didn't even exist back whenever the comparative year was. If one was to somehow mount a camera over a city, perfectly stationary, and take time-lapse photos of the older parts of town, they're in a shambles so far as tree cover compared to where they were years ago, before all the elms died, before all the big old silver maples started falling apart, etc. I'm sure it seems overly bleak how I worded that post, but I'm certain there's a kernel of truth to it, even as I and you folks and a bunch of others go on with our daily lives, much of which involves trees and other greenery. I'm not pointing my finger at anyone or anything...just telling it like it is, as I see it. And one other facet: The power companies, long having spent considerable dollars on line clearance, so we can all plug in our toasters, has finally prevailed on urban forestry managers all across the nation to plant little mini-trees under power lines. Now from that one single perspective, I get it. But from every other perspective, it's been a disaster for the look, feel, and design elements of our city streets. Does anyone really get anything from a street lined with 'Ivory Silk' tree lilacs, themselves spaced far and wide? They will never coalesce, they will never create a canopy, they will never do any of the key things I listed above that street trees can and should be doing. This as much as anything has diminished the value of our urban forests. I once put this idea down as one for further discussion at the arborist's meetings. Well-and this has happened a lot-they took me up on it and this subject was one of the main ones at the following year's conference. I didn't get to go to that one but from what I heard, there was much scowling and wailing and gnashing of teeth at this talk and the idea behind it. It was actively rejected by the majority of city foresters and others in attendance. That's how far things have fallen-we can't even talk about it!

Looks bad to me. Certainly not normal healing. If the black mold area spreads completely around the stem, then anything above that point is going to eventually die. You could try and graft a twig (or twigs) above and below to bypass the area, or you could try and graft some good green bark to replace the infected parts. But neither will be easy to do, and will probably fail.

"No were did I say that the branch changes position of attachment on the trunk. Limbs just don't reposition themselves on trees. I said the trunk lengthens." "Let just agree to disagree." We're disagreeing because you're wrong about your main thesis. When I said, "...change position of attachment ..." I'm making the point that branches do not move up FOR ANY REASON, be it the trunk lengthening or the branch taking a walk. I'm covering ALL the bases, in case you decide to land there next. "Yes, sometimes branch do need to be removed to benefit the tree, but not for vanity purposes." Let's make our disagreement here, clear, too. Appearance IS a major reason one removes lower tree limbs. The trees are working for the house. Their job is to shelter, frame and show it off as much as possible ... not screen off its most important features. And trees are working for people. They should be trying to stay out of their way as much as possible. "... cutting branches of very much size at all produces lingering wounds ..." This is explicitly another reason that the task of removing lower limbs on a timely basis, when their cross-section diameter is the smallest, is the best policy. Not only does it prevent low limbs from transitioning into awkward trunks, As soon it is recognized that the limb will not fit the final tree from, but is otherwise in the way of ground activity, and it's job is taken over by other limbs, it should go. Which would be true -- As a general rule, homeowners, A) keep up with tree maintenance on a timely basis, or B) They don't. ...? It's clearly the latter and by a wide margin. A hundred trees experiencing some level of neglect can be found for every one that is maintained on time. There's not much point in encouraging people to delay maintenance. They overwhelmingly already default to that position. I have to disagree that the birch problem is because it is missing limbs from its interior. Even if it had those, its form would still be defined by the existing limbs. It's ugly on account of being a single trunk tree starting its wide spreading canopy structure at 4' off of the ground ... centered in front of a sizable house. If compared in a line-up with other possible tree forms, its attractiveness level would rate at the bottom.